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<h2 style="color: rgb(0, 128, 0);">Historical
Information</h2>


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<p>The Apple II holds a unique
position in the
history of computing. It was the first truly general purpose
personal computer, and the first widely successful one. The Apple
II took the personal computer revolution from the garages of hard
core hobbyists and brought it into business and into millions of
homes around the country.</p>


<p>It was developed largely by
one man, Steve
Wozniak. He designed the system board, employing a number of
tricks which made it easier to build but harder to program. He
created a floppy drive interface, a hugely important feature at
that time, during a marathon two week session in December 1977.
He programmed the Apple ROM's and even wrote the first BASIC
interpreter for the Apple. </p>


<p>From the start, the Apple II
was a major
success, fueling the PC revolution and launching Apple Computer
Corporation as a major force in the computer industry. By 1980,
Apple Computer's yearly revenues already exceeded 100 million
dollars. In December of that year, the company went public,
making co-founders Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs each
multi-millionaires. </p>


<p>Although the Apple II had
originally been
designed for hobbyists and home users, about 90% of them were
being sold to small businesses. Apple therefore decided that the
successor to the Apple II, the Apple III, should be a serious
business computer. When it was released in 1980, it featured more
memory, an advanced new operating system, and support for
80-column text and lowercase characters. </p>


<blockquote style="font-style: italic;">
  
  <p>When we came out
with the Apple III, the engineering staff canceled every Apple II
engineering program that was ongoing, in expectation of the Apple III's
success. Every single one was canceled. We really perceived that the
Apple II would not last six months.</p>


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<blockquote style="font-style: italic;">
  
  <p style="margin-left: 40px;">-- Steve Wozniak
  </p>


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<p>However, the Apple III was
late and
suffered from poor backwards compatibility and a nearly 100%
hardware failure rate. Although Apple eventually addressed these
issues, they were not able to overcome the Apple III's bad
reputation. Apple III sales remained poor, while sales of the
older Apple II continued to climb. </p>


<p>In 1983, Apple finally
returned its
attention to the Apple II series, introducing the Apple IIe. The
IIe borrowed some features from the failed Apple III, including
80-column text and lowercase support. However, it was at its
heart an Apple II, and retained very strong compatibility with
the existing base of Apple II software. The Apple IIe was
extremely successful, soon selling at twice the volume of its
predecessor. </p>


<p>In 1984, Apple released their
first
portable computer, the Apple IIc. The IIc was very similar to the
IIe, but came in a compact case that included the most popular
peripherals, such as a disk drive and serial card, built in. It
also included an enhanced CPU (the 65c02) and mouse support.
However, the public did not embrace the Apple IIc, partly because
it was not expandable like the IIe and partly because people
incorrectly equated the small size with a lack of power. </p>


<p>Because the Apple IIe
continued to be
Apple's best seller, Apple returned focus to it in 1985,
releasing the Enhanced IIe. This computer featured the same
enhanced CPU as the IIc, and also included improved support for
80-column text and lowercase characters. Then, in 1987, they
spruced it up with a new keyboard and some other minor hardware
changes. This final IIe, called the Extended Keyboard IIe or the
Platinum IIe, is the computer that AppleWin emulates. </p>


<p>In 1986, Apple released one
more Apple II,
the IIgs. Although this computer maintained backwards
compatibility with most II and IIe programs, it had a radically
new architecture and feature set. It was a 16-bit computer,
unlike the previous Apple II's which were all 8-bit. It featured
new graphics modes which could display thousands of different
colors on the screen at once. And it had an advanced new sound
chip that could play fifteen different sounds at once. However,
partly because it was poorly marketed and partly because the
world had turned its attention to the IBM PC and Apple Macintosh,
the IIgs never really took off. </p>


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